The Divine Assembly: Starting The Mushroom Church
by MADELINE FERGUSON
From Mormon to Mushrooms, this is the story of Utah’s psychedelic church: The Divine Assembly.
The Divine Assembly was started by Steve Urquhart, former Utah legislator and former member of the LDS church after a life-altering experience on ayahuasca. After his own experience, he knew he needed to help others experience the divine power of this medicine so he started the church about 18 months ago.
The decision to take his first psychedelic trip came when Urquhart says he was “grappling with some life challenges” and dealing with the transition of a career change.
“I had just left my religion and I really just kind of happened into psychedelics and that really started a healing journey,” Urquhart recalled, “As part of that healing journey I had the really strong impression that this should be made more broadly available to other people.”
So, that’s what Urquhart has done with The Divine Assembly. He created a community to allow people to experience healing through mushrooms. Though he founded the church, he doesn’t expect anyone to have the same experiences as him. He also isn’t looking to be some type of prophet for the church. He wants community members to know they can have direct access to whatever their personal divine is.
“I came from a very prescriptive religion, where the experience with divinity was very intermediated … there were a lot of people in between me and the divine telling me what my relationship with the divine could or couldn’t be and I don’t like that. That’s the death of religion when you have to interact with the divine in a certain way.”
One of The Divine Assembly’s guiding principles is that the divine is and can be something unique to everyone and no one should ever stand in between you and your divine. That principle inspires the only tenant of the church:
“Each individual can commune with the divine and receive direct guidance.”
How Did The Divine Assembly Start?
In order to start TDA Urquhart simply filed as a non-profit with the state of Utah. He explained how the first amendment protects religions.
“The first amendment does two things, it says that people can believe what they want but then it also says we are not going to have a government-established religion. So that puts government in a position where it is very reluctant to mess with religion,” Urquhart explained.
Legally, under the United States Constitution churches don’t need to do anything to be a church. They can simply be.
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Getting Involved With The Divine Assembly
If you’d like to get involved and experience the community and medicine The Divine Assembly has to offer, you can start first on the website. The website also provides links where you can find the community of social media.
Joining is simple, you’ll just need to provide your name and email. But if you don’t want to provide your real name, Urquhart says feel free to make up a new one.
“A new name is a venerable religious tradition, so they can even make up a new religious name and email if they want and use this,” Urquhart ensured.
For many who have searched for healing or meaning, psychedelics have provided the ultimate medicine, The Divine Assembly takes that and provides an additional important aspect: Community.
“There’s a definite need out there for a new connection with the divine, a lot of people are finding us and as we go we are trying to figure things and we are enjoying the process. This is a platform anyone can build on, they don’t need my permission,” Urquhart concluded.